Arts & Sciences News

Professor, student to present happiness research at summer conference

Jan 13, 2014 |

Dr. Charles Walker, professor of psychology, and Brandon Kowalski, a senior computer science major, have had their research on happiness accepted for presentation at the Canadian Positive Psychology Conference to be held this summer in Ottawa, Canada.

They will report the results of two studies they did using a new internet enabled method to observe hedonic and eudaimonic happiness. Not surprisingly, they found that hedonic happiness dominated the weekends of students while eudiamonic happiness ruled weekdays. However, they were surprised to find that while men usually self-report lower levels of happiness, in their study, they manifested more actual behaviors of happiness than did women. Their results suggest that for both genders hedonic and eudaimonic happiness are dynamically interdependent states of being.

Direct observation of happiness is unusual. Most studies rely on self-report, the researchers say. Kowalski and Walker developed one of the first systems in the world to record direct independent observation of happiness.

Also at this conference, Kowalski will announce free open access to the website and observation technology he created.